For the record, I have managed to limit advertising for tykes to near 0. Young enough where control over electronics is viable.
As soon as a game pops up, the only unfiltered ad exposure basically, and it’s glue. The bright colors, the subconscious techniques, the hidden waveforms, whatever magic sauce they use to steal attention WORKS.
It’s like seeing a fairy tapping kids on the head and stealing all of their attention as they become droolingly attentive zombies to whatever drivel reserves the sales screen real estate for that time slice.
It is concerningly effective, and I can bet most everyone grew up saturated with it. Bordering on harassment/abuse since it can not be entirely avoided.
This is why I didn’t keep my child away from ads. Kids have extremely plastic brains and I wanted to get that neural plasticity to protect my kid for the future. The ad industry spends more money figuring kids out than the education industry - hiding ads makes ads exciting.
I view advertising as a toxin you can’t build natural immunity to vs a venom that can be acclimated to. Lead, not capsaicin.
Advertising is profitable due to subconscious connections manifesting to conscious judgements shifting. You can never be protected from this influence.
It’s still diffusing into growing neural nets, even if mind-numbing filters are being used to glancingly minimize the potential ill-effects. An analogy is a sapling oak growing on an angle for 10 years, then correcting. Sure it’s still a tree and fine, maybe even some character. The tree that grew straight, never having to avoid an obstacle is taller and sturdier against the elements, less likely to get eaten by short animals. The brain is plastic, but it does solidify as you age.
This makes sense. Growing up I had a friend whose parents didn’t let him watch tv. Whenever he came over to play he would stare almost drooling at the tv (or if it wasn’t on, begging to turn it on) while the rest of us who were allowed to watch tv played and were easily able to ignore it.
As soon as a game pops up, the only unfiltered ad exposure basically, and it’s glue. The bright colors, the subconscious techniques, the hidden waveforms, whatever magic sauce they use to steal attention WORKS.
It’s like seeing a fairy tapping kids on the head and stealing all of their attention as they become droolingly attentive zombies to whatever drivel reserves the sales screen real estate for that time slice.
It is concerningly effective, and I can bet most everyone grew up saturated with it. Bordering on harassment/abuse since it can not be entirely avoided.